Kiki (K): Hi everyone, welcome back to the Kartini Teknologi podcast with Galuh and Kiki here. I usually say Kiki first but now I’m mentioning Galuh first because today’s guest is Galuh’s request. But before we talk about that, I want to talk about how I’m so happy that we’re now at our eighth episode, and we haven’t run out of guests to invite yet. So, I want to say thanks to our previous guests and today’s guest for coming to Kartini Teknologi. It shows that Indonesia is not lacking of inspirational women. I personally am happy that we are able to keep this going until now, and hopefully we can keep going until next year, until the next seasons. So, I guess we’ll have Galuh introduce our guest today.

Galuh (G): So our guest today is Velta. She’s my friend, but personally I think she’s very cool, why? Because although she’s young, she already has many experiences under her belt, from design, UX, you name it. And we also haven’t discussed about design, while I think design is important in technology because the experience of a user is shaped with the design and UX that exists. So it’s really important that we talk about this. That’s it from me, Velta please introduce yourself, what are you working at now, where are you based, what are your passions.

Velta (V): Hi hi. First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to share in Galuh and Kiki’s podcast. Currently I’m based in Dubai, right now I’m an interaction designer for one of the AI and machine learning companies, Pigeonline. On the side, I also work as a freelance UX engineer at Toptal, and you can say that the overall nature of my work is fully remote, so I can work from everywhere. My background is actually computer science. I studied information technology and on my last year I chose a minor in human-computer interactions or user experience design.

G: You graduated from University of Queensland with a computer science major and user experience minor. It seems like something like this is still rare in Indonesia, you know, curriculums that focus on UX. Or is there any?

V: I don’t know much about how it is in Indonesia, but in Australia, for bachelor’s degrees they are usually offered as minors, so you’re specializing in UX. But there are many master’s degrees which focus is true to interaction design. And for master’s degrees for interaction design, you usually either have to have a bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, or information systems… the requirement to get into an interaction design or HCI program in Australia is, from my observation, you have to have a degree from a technology-related field too.

G: What did you study when you were in university?

V: When I took a specialization in UX, I took courses such as digital prototyping, so it wasn’t just mockups or prototypes, but we also learned how to build something tangible that people can interact with. For example we created a device that gets people to discuss ina table, or device that can engage conversations in a conference or something. It’s quite interesting because you can say that UX or UI/UX is a very diverse field, I would say people from various backgrounds can get into UX because the skill that is needed in the UX field is a skill of empathy. And I think if you want to ace in UX, you can be a more empathetic person.

K: I’m curious, it seems like you’ve been interested in UX since when you chose your distinction in college. How did you get interested to learn more about UX?

V: Okay, so from college until… when I was in college I used to work part-time or do holiday work in college, and I was always a software engineer. At that time, I was very burned out, in a way I felt that I want to channel my creative side so I started thinking how to not get burned out when working. I wanted that while I was working, the classes that I take would be classes that are fun. So in my last year I didn’t do any programming at all, no database and stuff so that last year was filled with human-computer interaction stuff and it turned out to be very fun. After graduation, I tried to apply for jobs that didn’t have anything to do with software engineering, which was UX design. And it turns out I really like it, especially when I was in college I had to do research or assignments that were related to UX things every week.

K: Looking at your profile, you have worked as a User Interface Architect, UX Designer, and now your role is Interaction Designer. What’s the difference between those roles?

V: They’re roughly almost the same. But sometimes, if the title has “designer” behind it, it focuses on more nontechnical stuff, that’s how it’s been so far for me. And there’s no requirement to wireframe with code in the description. When you’re a UX engineer or architect, sometimes I have to create prototypes for frontend design. So that’s where the key difference is. But so far it seems that all those roles are actually roughly the same.

G: As an interaction designer, who do you usually work with? Is it engineers, or researchers, or people from business?

V: Actually I usually work with engineers, because usually I’m the also the one conducting user research, like we have workshops or user interviews and there are accessibility checks as well because there’s one person in my team whose job is to work on accessibility; So it’s really fun because we get to brainstorm about what kind of product we will build or work for clients.

G: So where do the requirements usually come from? Do you have your own ideas or are there requests from your boss, or do you all talk about it together?

V: As for requirements, usually clients already have sets of user stories or features that they want to create. Like clients would come with a vision in their mind and our task, say as a contractor or someone executing it, is to validate their ideas, and maybe the main function of UX itself is to test and validate and test and validate again through several iterations. What’s interesting is no matter how many requirements clients already have, by the end of the day what will prove or disprove it is our data. So we have a testable hypothesis that we later present to client, and they themselves can see the result which they’ll consider from the business angle, marketing angle, and many others.

G: I’m curious—what did you mean by validating and testing? How do you do it?

V: So in projects there are what we call as metrics. Metrics depend on the projects themselves. Let’s say it’s a digital product. It doesn’t always have to be a website or an application. When I was at an agency, it was a brand and marketing agency, so for several times we did some kind market test towards, let’s say the experience in airports or boarding gates. So metrics may vary, like speed, success rate, there is a wide range of metrics.

K: You have a technical background, right. Do you think it’s important for a designer to have a technical aspect or knowledge to support their career as a designer, or is it just a “nice to have” thing? What do you think?

V: I think… maybe… for some things, like if you’re a motion designer or an interaction designer, sometimes you have a vision to, let’s say, build cool things that are actually doable, but because you’re blindsided by technical things that will be heavy for the developers or will be heavy for that particular sprint, it can be a burden. However I think what’s more important is communication, because although we don’t understand the technical aspect of a challenge that we’re trying to tackle, but when we communicate it to our team, we can understand each other and compromise. So I think it’s more about communication and awareness rather than technical spec.

K: Speaking of workflow, when you’re working, what are the steps that you usually have? Maybe from setting the requirements with your client to the result… until you deliver your deliverable. What’s the process like?

V: It usually depends on the project and client. The internal process is usually like… we customize Google design sprints, so there’s a framework from Google for digital prototyping, where by the end of the workshop we would have a working product that we can directly test with the stakeholder there. So it’s… I think it’s a great way to actually make people participate in our brainstorming session. It’s a way to… like what I’ve mentioned before, test your validation real quick, because after every design sprint we usually know, oh we’ll have this feature, this functionality makes sense, and so on.

G: Can you tell us about what are the most interesting projects you’ve worked on and why?

V: So now I’m working on an underwriting platform for an insurance company in the US. It’s very interesting for me because first, I had never known about the insurance world before. I didn’t know what’s an underwriting process like, what’s the flow like. So this is very interesting to me because it makes me learn new things, and they have also brought a set of design guidelines that they own. Now I’m also working on e-government projects, because right now Dubai is going towards e-government things to actually make things efficient, and now they’re actually investing a lot in technology, like they’ve invested in AI for their search engine, and I’m also working on a project that the government people can use to search for talents in the GCC countries.

G: When you’re working on an application, you have to understand the context, right? How do you learn about it, do you learn it by yourself or is there a special session with your client to learn more about it?

V: So before project kickoffs we have three different interviews with three different underwriters, with different user experiences, different demographics… there was someone who is working remotely, another one who’s always working from the office. It was very insightful because as someone who’s designing the platform, I can totally ask any questions that I have in mind. I also do researches in other places, like for example reading their manual handbooks and trying to understand the client’s requirements, what are they like so that we all have the same vision.

K: I also want to ask about tools. What tools do you usually use daily?

V: For tools, I used to use Sketch. But Sketch is only available in Mac. Now I’m converting all my designs to Figma, because I think Figma is easier, is more handy. You can open it in your browser, and for people who don’t have a Figma account, they can still view their prototype and that’s very helpful for clients. Actually in my company we don’t have cloud at all, it’s all very strict and we’re now looking for a platform that can use SSO and all that. Besides of Figma, perhaps Framer to create moving prototypes like motion design. And I think that’s it. Figma, Framer. Back then people usually used Zeppelin for developer handover, like you would tell them what’s the font size, what’s the heading, what are the font family used. With Figma, you don’t have to spec out all of your design elements, so it’s more handy that way.

G: So now you only need Figma mainly, right?

V: Yes. I used to use Invision as well, so there were three different tools: Invision or Marvel, Zeppelin for handoffs, and Sketch. But now I use Figma to do all those three things.

K: Seems like Figma is very popular for designers. What are the challenges that you’ve faces as an interaction designer so far?

V: It’s what I’ve said earlier… although you’re the type of person who, let’s say, communicates with your team, sometimes it’s a little bit hard to delegate what you mean, especially when you don’t have data atau evidence to back it up. Sometimes, in my opinion, designers have their own ego—I want it that way, I want it this way. To delegate that to other stakeholders… you’re just a piece of this whole thing yang working together towards something, right. So there’s a lot of compromising there. And you have to speak out your mind out loud, if that makes sense. So it’s more about communication. Especially if you’re working remotely, right, because the only way you can talk to your team is through conference call like this.

G: How did you get this data to convince people or to back up your arguments?

V: There are a few ways to do it. Usually I obtain this data from user interviews, or accessibility stuff that we’re now trying to really tackle because it’s a very important thing, but in our team it’s something that we really want to establish.

G: Speaking about accessibility, accessibility is very important right, but I don’t know, I think it’s not really something that’s often discussed here in Indonesia. Can you tell us what accessibility is and why it’s important?

V: In my own team, we are aware that our users are not as close as you think it is. Like we realize, like what I mentioned at the start, designers or people working in tech gotta have empathy, because not everyone has the same culture, background, or physical privilege. So we’re trying to cover things that we can do generally. Like in Arab countries, let’s say, we want to create a platform for the government. We have to be aware that their local languages are different from ours, so we have to prepare for RTL and stuff. It’s something that, let’s say you want to create a copywriting for a button, as simple as a button that says “click here”. We have to think whether it will look as good in Arabic or not. It’s something that, I think it’s true, not many people are aware of this accessibility issue. I was one of them until someone tried to educate me just how important it is. And I think it’s the most important. Because if we’re creating these platforms or systems that exclude a lot of people, I don’t think there’s a point on actually building one.

G: That’s true. I used to think that what matters in design is it has to look good aesthetically. And after that I thought oh, user experience is most important… you have to be able to get a user from point A to point B. But when you think about it, if your design is not accessible, these users can’t even get to point A. So it’s probably the most important thing out of all the things you have to consider.

V: Back then, even for stuff as simple as choosing colors, I didn’t think about the contrast ratio, whereas for people who have partial color blindness, it’s very significant for them to be able to access the program.

K: Did you learn about accessibility in college or when you were in the industry?

V: Actually when I was in college there was no Accessibility course. When I moved to my current job, one of my teammates created a workshop once every two weeks to talk about Accessibility, because they undertook an Accessibility course in Canada, and they tried to get us to take the certification ourselves, and because it’s online, we can do it while we’re working, like when we’re taking breaks we can try learning from there.

G: When it comes to accessibility, is there any guideline, like for example for colors they have to be like this or that?

V: For some things, like for example body paragraphs, you can’t have them with a font size less than 14px, or for headings… but, well, this might sound like I’m promoting Figma, but Figma has plugins now, and these plugins are very handy. They have a plugin for accessibility, so you don’t have to audit everything one by one yourself, they will automatically edit your designs. So you just need to install the plugins, run it on your prototype, and it will tell you that oh, this font size needs to be bigger, this paragraph spacing needs to be bigger. Sometimes when you’re auditing it manually, you might miss out on some things, right.

K: That’s interesting. For friends who are interested in having a career as an interaction designer, what do they need to do? What do they need to learn, or do they need to have portfolios, or where should they have internships at?

V: When I was in college I did projects for clients, and I think it’s very useful for portfolios and references. And let’s say you can’t take an internship or have clients yet, you can start your own personal projects. Right now there are many maker communities like ProductHUnt, Shipstreams, or Makerlog. They usually have these 24-hour startup program or something, so it doesn’t have to be a real startup but you can actually create your own project, and I think it’s a great way to actually start and getting recognition from the community. After that, when you’re already confident enough and you enjoy working on these projects, you can take internships and real clients for your portfolio. But I think for interaction design you do need to have a portfolio. I suggest that if you’re not someone who’s into coding your own portfolio from scratch, you can use providers like Squarespace, Wix, or Adobe Portfolio, just because it’s easy to set up and you can buy your own domain too.

K: How did you get your first job in the UX field?

V: That was actually before I took UX in college. I used to intern in Singapore as a UX designer, and [when applying] I used the projects that I created myself, like redesigning Bioskop 21 in Indonesia and stuff. So I submitted my work, but back then it was a pdf portfolio, not online. And then I was interviewed, and next there was a project test, and once I passed the project test, I worked as a UX design intern. And that was actually the very first time.

G: You mentioned communities, right? What are the communities that you join and what’s the benefit that you get from joining them?

V: There’s this Interaction Design Associate meetup, so it’s actually worldwide but they have a chapter here in Dubai. I like it because they usually have workshops like how to create user personas, we also share about our work, and also networking. I actually got my latest job from networking, not from formally applying and stuff. So yeah the benefits are more about networking and knowledge sharing. But well like all other communities, sometimes we feel impostor syndrome, sometimes people showcase the skillsets that they have, like X, Y, Z. Don’t feel discouraged, my suggestion is to turn that into motivation rather that something that brings you down. Because that’s how I felt at the start.

K: What’s interesting is you have worked in four different countries. Can you tell us about the interesting experiences that you have while working in those four countries?

V: So I usually have jobs that align with my field and degree. But once I worked as a teacher in Australia, so I was teaching kids. And it was something that was eyeopening. While I was in Austraia, I was a software engineer, and in my office in the entire floor everyone who was working on technical stuff were guys. And it was at first very intimidating because I thought I wasn’t confident enough. I tried looking for summer jobs and the job was to teach kids in a rural area in Brisbane and it turned out I was also the only woman there. The eyeopening part was, if you can stand up for yourself, it’s all right. Like if you feel like you’re not a part of the majority, it can be discouraging. Now I’m part of the majority right in Dubai, but still. I feel like it’s more about the mentality rather than the environment or countries I’m visiting.

K: You said that you felt discouraged as a woman in the middle of other software engineer friends. How did you handle it as a woman, and do you still feel that way until now?

V: No, because I’m working remotely, so I don’t actually meet anyone. But back then yeah I really felt that, because when I was an intern I had to go there every day, I couldn’t work from home. How I handle it, well I hang out with them as usual, maybe I’m the kind of person who’s easy to get close to people, and when I’m close to that person I won’t feel like that person is trying to belittle me or my skills. But well yeah I really felt then, when I was among guys.

K: It’s like trying to fit in isn’t it? Because I also went through it myself. I was a programmer myself and I was the first female software engineer in the company. So I questioned, do I have to blend with all of the other guys? So I felt I had to mingle with them. Okay. So you mentioned about working remotely. How long have you been working remotely for?

V: I’ve been working remotely since March 2019 until now. My team is actually headquartered in Canada. So they’ve just opened a hub here, and I’m the first employee that they hired in the UAE. Actually their investor is based in the UAE and they required them to have an employee that stays here if they want to have a seed round or serie A. So… I like working remotely in Dubai, because without realizing it there are actually a lot of remote workers in Dubai.

K: Is there a community for remote workers there?

V: Yes, so I’m actually joining a coworking space, it’s not a coworking space where you have to pay it monthly and you come to the same place and stuff, they have many venues and you can choose to check-in wherever and it’s already included in your membership. In the app, they usually have community meetups, and we can also know how many members are checking in the same venue. For the community itself, I don’t join a lot of communities aside of the Interaction Design Associate one. There’s a community called Elpha, although it’s not based in Dubai, but they also have meetups for remote workers in Dubai. And turns out there are a lot of them. In Dubai, if you see from Instagram, there are a lot of people working as social media influencers or digital marketers, and they usually work from coworking spaces or cafes.

K: What’s the name of the coworking space? It seems like fun,

V: It’s called Let’s Work. It’s local.

K: So it’s only in Dubai?

V: So far, yes, so far I know it only exists in the UAE, there’s one in Abu Dhabi and stuff. But it’s only in the UAE.

K: What’s the most fun part of working remotely?

V: I can do meetings in my sweatpants. I also have a cooking hobby, so it’s easy to make excuses to cook or eat. But the trade-off is… I don’t know if other people feel the same thing, but sometimes I feel to isolated at home and stuff. That’s why I join Let’s Work because I feel like I’m being forced to meet other people and not spend too much time at home.

K: That’s similar to what we discussed with our previous guest, Alanda. She also works remotely and she mentioned the same thing, she also has a little kid so it’s a bit hard to meet new people. I also feel that way, like… that’s the saddest part of working remotely, when we don’t have people around. And we can only really feel that when we go through that ourselves, because well back then we would think wow, working remotely must be fun. Turns out there is its downside as well.

V: Sometimes we spend too much time at our home, I’ve read that someone who has been working remotely for 8 years that sometimes we forget to switch off or log off from our work.

K: How do you manage your time usually?

V: I’m still learning how to do it, but I think I’m getting better at it. So I usually start working at 11 and finish at 6 or 7. And… in between, I already have my own schedule, so although I’m not working at an office, I have a schedule just like when I’m working at the office.

K: How about meetings? The HQ of your company is in Canada, right? Do you have meetings with your team in Canada? There must be a time difference, right?

V: Canada is very tricky actually—even for Dubai timezone, it’s very tricky. To schedule a meeting at 4 PM in Dubai, it means 8 AM in Canada. So meetings are something that we have agreed beforehand together, with timezones that we agreed upon together. Sometimes they’re the one sacrificing, sometimes it’s me, and we also have an office and someone in London, so sometimes they’re the one sacrificing too.

K: So it’s compromising with each other, right. You’re actually working remotely from Dubai. Have you thought about coming back to Indonesia one day?

V: Like returning working in Indonesia or returning for good?

K: Maybe to stay in Indonesia?

V: I think someday I will, just not in like, maybe the near future, not this year.

K: So your current contract is based in Dubai isn’t it?

V: Yes, because like I mentioned before, our investor is actually in the UAE, so they require someone to stay here.

K: Let’s talk about Toptal. It seems interesting, because Toptal seems like Upwork isn’t it?

V: Yes, but, I’m not sure what’s the mechanism like in Upwork, whether after you get verified you can apply for jobs straight away or not. But in Toptal, the flow is you have interviews. The quickest is you can get your interviews done in three weeks. And I think there is a lot of paperwork, there are legal documents and such. And usually without applying to jobs, you’ll get matched with the clients. If I’m not mistaken, you can also negotiate your rate. They’re also more discreet because every time you’re going to have a meeting, you want to communicate with a client, you have to sign an NDA that says you will use Toptal’s platform to actually communicate with your client.

G: Maybe it’s because in Upwork or other platforms some people eventually do their deals outside of the platform?

V: Maybe it’s more about breaching the contract.

K: Do you have to pay to be in Toptal? Like if you’re the one seeking for jobs.

V: No. But if you’re a client, you have to place a deposit, like 50% of the total budget that you have to hire this person. Because they’re the one handling all payments to ensure security.

G: Are these interviews conducted by the people from Toptal or do you interview with the clients, so that for every new client you’re going to have a new interview?

V: Good question. So in Toptal, the three-week interview that I mentioned is just an interview for you to get listed in Toptal as Toptalers. After that, for the clients themselves, you either get matched with recruiters or you apply to the jobs yourself. But even then you have to have client-facing interviews as well, once or twice.

G: Even after you get matched with recruiters?

V: That’s right. And you’re not the one that the recruiter proposes, for example if you get matched with Client A, there can be three or four other people who are interviewed by the client.

G: Can you work more than one jobs at the same time or do they limit you to just one?

V: There is no limit about how many projects or clients you can take, but in your profile you have to specify, so every time you’re applying for jobs, you have to answer questions such as “how many hours is your availability in a week?” Is it 40 hours? That’s the maximum, right, 40 hours, if you want to have more, you have to e-mail the system person to increase your limit. Or 20 hours per week, or maybe you want to get paid per hour.

G: I’m curious. So you have a job as an interaction designer in Pigeonline, and you have a job in Toptal too. How do you manage your time, like, when do you set your time to work for your job at Toptal?

V: So that’s actually the advantage of remote work. Because sometimes when you’re at the office, a work that takes you five hours sometimes gets finished in seven hours because you want to take your time and stuff. Maybe the advantage of remote work is there is no micromanagement so you can work on things according to the time and capacity that you have. Because there are some projects that can actually be done within 2 weeks, or 6 weeks, or 3 weeks. I also give acknowledgment to my current company that I’ve been in Toptal from back then. In Toptal you can also set your matching and request to off, so we can do so if we want to take a break.

K: Toptal seems fun, it seems that there are not many people here using it though, most people are still using Upwork.

V: In Toptal, most clients want to find timezones that at the maximum are overlapping 4-5 hours from US timezones. So I think that’s one of the reasons, they usually want someone who’s already in the US or doesn’t have too much of a time difference with them. I see that most of the clients are US based.

K: I see, so it’s more optimized for people residing in the US. Maybe that’s why it’s not very popular here. Any last words for our listeners?

V: I think, first, don’t feel discouraged, because it’s not necessarily true that someone you feel is better than you, is not necessarily better than you. And always ask questions, no question is a dumb question, because I feel like when you’re asking something, you can spark discussions between your team or friends and again that’s a very important thing, because by doing so you can find out things that you don’t know about. Like for example, if my current teammate does not try to open my eyes and other teams about accessibility, maybe my path to being aware about it will be longer. So ignorance is not always a bliss. But yeah, you still need to communicate. And also, remote work is not always glamorous, because it’s not for everyone, I think.

K: All right, thank you so much Velta for the chat! It has really opened my eyes about how we work with designers, and also about remote working.

V: Thank you so much!